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Goethe-Kino
House Without Roof

Goethe-Institut London

50 Princes Gate
Exhibition Road
SW7 2PH London

Kurdish siblings Alan, Jan and Lya were born in northern Iraq and grew up in Stuttgart in Germany. When their mother dies, they congregate in Iraq only to find out that it is their mother's last wish to be buried next to her husband, who had died in the war against Saddam Hussein.
Fulfilling this wish does not only confronts them with the challenge of taking her coffin across the Region of Kurdistan-Iraq to her remote home village. They also have to shake off their relatives who oppose this endevour for reasons that only slowly emerge. And they have to deal with their own differences and their relationship to the war-afflicted country that they haven't lived in since their childhood.

Filmed on location in Northern Iraq on a small budget and with a Kurdish-German team in 2015, the tragic history of the region always remains present. But the film finds a gentle, at times humorous way to tell the story of its protagonists who pursue their shared task along three very different trajectories.

Director Soleen Yusef was born in Duhok in the Kurdish part of Iraq. When she was nine years old her family fled to Germany for political reasons. In Berlin Yusef attended acting and singing lessons while also working as an assistant in film production, direction and distribution. In 2008 she took up her studies in film at the Film Acadamy Baden-Württemberg, which she completed with her graduation film House Without Roof.